An Arab soldier scaled a wall using the corpses and then, gripping his scimitar with both hands, jumped into the Tang soldiers and began to madly hack and slash. One, two, three… countless Arab soldiers, heedless of death, charged at the first defense line.
They came in a ceaseless flood, and not even the beehives or ballistae could stop them.
The situation was not just becoming critical at the first line. On the eastern side of the battlefield, behind the second defense line, the situation of the Qixi Protectorate army was also worsening.
Chapter 907 - Sharp Edge, the General Stars of Deflecting Blade Manor!
Chapter 907: Sharp Edge, the General Stars of Deflecting Blade Manor!
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
“Release!”
Xu Keyi led the remaining ballista teams in working with the beehives to frenziedly fire at the oncoming Western Turkic and Tibetan cavalry.
Dalun Ruozan’s catapults had been far more effective than expected, especially against Xu Keyi’s ballista teams, as they had been the primary target. In those successive rains of stones, forty to fifty ballistae had been destroyed, and a significant portion had been damaged and were still being repaired.
Even though the steel catapults on the walls had succeeded in bringing an end to the attacks, the Turkic and Tibetan cavalry had succeeded in reaching the second defense line. Xu Keyi could only make as much as he could of the time remaining to fire on the enemy soldiers.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Volley after volley of ballista bolts was fired, howling through the air and causing chaos in front of the second defense line. Tibetan and Turkic cavalry were dying in droves, their bodies kicking up dust as they were dragged along the ground. But in truth, the lethality of Xu Keyi’s assault was far less impressive than it seemed.
Dalun Ruozan and Duwu Sili had equipped almost all their cavalry with those round shields, which their soldiers hid behind, pressing their bodies against their horses. Thus, the same ballista bolts were made several times less effective.
A ballista bolt would only kill four or five, at most six enemy cavalry. To an army of one hundred and twenty thousand, this did not even count as a severe wound.
“Ready!”
A calm and energetic voice roared over the eastern battlefield. Li Siye rode forward on his Ferghana steed and flourished his emblematic Wootz Steel sword. As this massive sword was raised, the five thousand Wushang Cavalry quickly assembled behind him.
All of them wore Meteoric Metal armor and wielded Wootz Steel swords. In terms of both mental and physical strength, they were at their prime and could be considered the strongest force of cavalry in the history of the Central Plains. More importantly, these five thousand cavalry were all extremely disciplined and coordinated, in a way that no other cavalry force could compare.
“All soldiers! Prepare for battle!”
The sounds of more swords unsheathing could be heard behind the second defense line. Li Siye and his Wushang Cavalry were not the only ones getting ready for battle. Sun Zhiming, Zhuang Zhengping, Chi Weisi, and the other elites of Deflecting Blade Manor were lining up with the soldiers of Qixi and the mercenary cavalry from the Western Regions, forming neat squares and rows as they readied for the fight.
This Battle of Talas was not the first time the people of Deflecting Blade Manor and the mercenaries of the Western Regions had fought alongside Li Siye, and all of them were prepared to launch a joint assault.
Awooo!
The tens of thousands of gray wolves were rushing over. No one knew how many wolves Duwu Sili had brought with him, but they seemed endless. The beehives would clear a batch, only for them to be replaced by yet another batch. In the skies, the vultures continued to give their strange cries as they flew back and forth, up and down. But the most concerning force of all was still those tens of thousands of Turkic and Tibetan cavalry.
“Kill!!”
The enemy cavalry roared as they increased their speed. Neither the beehives nor the ballistae could stop them now.
Twenty zhang!
Ten zhang!
“Charge!”
Without the slightest hesitation, Li Siye aimed his sword forward and charged out from the steel walls like a lightning bolt. Rumble! The earth trembled as the five thousand Wushang Cavalry shot forward like a sword leaving its sheath, following Li Siye in his charge.
So incredible was their momentum that their charge of five thousand exuded the power of fifty thousand.
“Kill!”
At the same time, Sun Zhiming, Zhuang Zhengping, Chi Weisi, and the Qixi soldiers charged forward as well. All of them were bellowing, afraid to fall behind as they streaked toward the Turks and Tibetans with terrifying speed. Wang Chong had chosen to execute a completely different strategy on the second defense line. More than forty thousand Tang cavalry charged out from behind the steel walls to confront the Tibetans and Turks. They had not chosen to retreat, but to charge at the enemy.
In the Central Plains, the Great Tang had no reason to retreat, not against the Western Turks and not against the Tibetans.
Rumble!
The two forces of cavalry crashed against each other like prehistoric beasts, neither side willing to back down. Boom! Crash! Swords flashed, and in the blink of an eye, thousands of Turkic and Tibetan cavalry had fallen beneath the hooves of the five thousand Wushang Cavalry.
In front of Wootz Steel swords, the armor worn by the Tibetans and Turks might as well have been made of paper, and was instantly cut to pieces. The five thousand Wushang Cavalry unstoppably slashed and hacked through the Turko-Tibetan army like they were slicing vegetables.
Boom! In a single charge, the elite center of the Turko-Tibetan army had been shattered, tens of thousands of soldiers falling to chaos.
“Charge! Those who offend my Great Tang will all be punished, no matter how far away they are! Kill them all!”
Stimulated by the charge of Li Siye and the Wushang Cavalry, Sun Zhiming, Zhuang Zhengping, Chi Weisi, and the other elites of Deflecting Blade Manor felt the blood surge to their heads, and they led their own groups of cavalry into the fray. Boomboomboom! Defensive halos, charging halos, attacking halos, strength halos… they burst out from their bodies like bamboo sprouting out of the ground after the rain.
Halo clattered against halo and warhorse crashed against warhorse, the soldiers on both sides mingling together.
Sun Zhiming, Zhuang Zhengping, and Chi Weisi led their tens of thousands of soldiers in brave charges on the battlefield, but unlike ordinary commanders, they did not merely engage in a stalemate with the Tibetans and Turks. They worked with Li Siye to further improve the situation of the Tang in this battle.
Neigh!
Sun Zhiming led his cavalry in an arc around Li Siye, charging into the eight thousand Tibetans on the flank, precisely at the point where they were the least organized. The time and place of this attack were perfect, and amidst the crashing of horses and the gleaming of sabers, Sun Zhiming’s forces swiftly scattered the Tibetans.
The army that had been divided in two by Li Siye’s assault now fell into further disorder.
Meanwhile, Zhuang Zhengping, Chi Weisi, Gao Feng, and Nie Yan, these students from Deflecting Blade Manor, were working together to open the way for Li Siye, assaulting the right and left flanks. They had all been taught Wang Chong’s art of war and received a systematic education in tactics.
Not only that, when Wang Chong wasn’t present, under his suggestion, they had begun to learn from each other. Sun Zhiming had taken what he had learned from Wang Chong and his own insights into cavalry tactics, and given public lectures on them in Deflecting Blade Manor. With the guidance of this future number one cavalry general of the Great Tang, Zhuang Zhengping, Chi Weisi, Gao Feng, Nie Yan, and all the others had developed a far deeper understanding of cavalry tactics than the ordinary person.
They might not have been physically strong, but in terms of battle
field intuition and execution of tactics, they were amazing.
Boomboomboom!
The sickening crunch of collisions filled the air in front of the second defense line as the members of Deflecting Blade Manor led their cavalry like a wave sweeping through the enemy army. The forty thousand Tang cavalry had soon scattered the sixty thousand Tibetans and Turks.
At this sight, Duwu Sili, Dalun Ruozan, Huoshu Huicang, and Dusong Mangpoje couldn’t help but stare in shock.
“Just who are these people? When did the Great Tang start to have so many formidable figures that even the Qixi Protectorate has so many of them!”
Duwu Sili was an extremely experienced general, and his intention in coming to Talas had been to deal with Gao Xianzhi, Wang Chong, and a few of the more renowned generals of the Anxi Protectorate army. He had not expected that Wang Chong would have so many formidable tactical generals under his command. They didn’t seem very strong, but their grasp of the battlefield was simply beyond belief.
Even though he was watching from the hills, he could still feel the sharpness of that threat. Those minor generals of the Great Tang were leading those tens of thousands of cavalry like numerous swords, thrusting in and out of the Turkic and Tibetan soldiers, scattering these veteran elites. It was easy to see just how much of a threat these commanders posed.
“I do not know!”
Dalun Ruozan finally spoke, his brow furrowed. Duwu Sili was not the only one surprised at this result. In the past, Dalun Ruozan had known that Wang Chong was an extremely formidable strategist and tactician, but he had never known that even Wang Chong’s subordinates would be so terrifying. Such subordinates only increased the threat that Wang Chong posed, like giving a tiger wings.
As for the weak point that was their lack of physical strength, this was not very important.
“I have heard that the Great Tang has three military training camps established by the Great Tang’s Sage Emperor. Of them, the Kunwu Training Camp has a Deflecting Blade Manor that was established by the current Qixi Protector-General. That Deflecting Blade Manor took in quite a few students of Kunwu Training Camp, and these are probably the people we are now facing.”
Dalun Ruozan’s hair fluttered in the wind as he spoke.
Although he still didn’t understand much about those minor generals, Dalun Ruozan did regard Wang Chong as his mortal enemy, so he understood much more about him than Duwu Sili. In that moment, Dalun Ruozan had grasped the background of Sun Zhiming, Zhuang Zhengping, Chi Weisi, Gao Feng, and Nie Yan.
Chapter 908 - Wang Chong Strikes! The Bane of the Battlefield Halo!
Chapter 908: Wang Chong Strikes! The Bane of the Battlefield Halo!
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
Li Siye, Sun Zhiming, Zhuang Zhengping, Chi Weisi, Gao Feng, Nie Yan… these commanders led the forces of Qixi in a frenzied charge in front of the second defense line. However, just their force of forty thousand could not stop the charge of the more than one hundred thousand Turko-Tibetan elites. For soldiers, quality outweighed quantity. This battle was taking place in Talas, west of the Cong Mountains, and the Tibetans and Turks had needed absolute secrecy in their approach, so they were not capable of bringing that many soldiers.
Thus, while Dalun Ruozan had only brought around seventy thousand and Duwu Sili had only brought around forty thousand, these were the elite of the elite.
Though they were fighting against forty thousand powerful soldiers of the Great Tang, they continued to come in endless waves. Not even Li Siye and his Wushang Cavalry wreaking havoc through their lines could stop all of them.
Some of the Turks and Tibetans had even chosen to go around Li Siye and Sun Zhiming to attack the second defense line together with Duwu Sili’s wolves, with Xu Keyi’s ballista force being one of their primary targets.
Neigh!
A warhorse cried out as a Turkic cavalryman borrowed a pile of wolf corpses to jump over the shields of the infantry and land behind them. Swishswishswish! Countless sabers, spears, swords, and halberds came at him from all sides.
This Turk’s body landed as a sieve that leaked blood, a corpse that could not be any more dead. But his arrival was like a signal, as he was soon followed by the rest of the army, Turkic and Tibetan cavalry jumping over in twos and threes, landing in the middle of the army to take the place of the fallen.
“Kiiill!”
Meanwhile, on the other side, a frenzied shout echoed through the sky, spoken not in the language of the Tang, but in an Arabic tongue that was suffused with a brutal and bloodthirsty aura. Khaled, the Beast of Arabia, had previously had his Iron Beast Army essentially crippled by the Tang ballistae.
But the Iron Beast Army had still played a major role. They had raised up the corpses on the battlefield, using them as shields to block the ballista fire. They might have lost their warhorses, but the Iron Beast Halo and the Dark Blood Shield remained in place, still reducing the lethality of the ballistae.
Roooar! A dismounted Iron Beast soldier raised up high the massive corpse of a horse as he charged at a ballista. A ballista bolt pierced through the dead horse and through his armor, but then it was deflected by his charge and went shooting off into the sky.
Only the warriors of the Arabian Empire, who fought to live and fought to the death, would dare to so fearlessly and ferociously use their bodies to block a ballista bolt.
The fearless Iron Beast Army had obtained an incredibly precious opportunity for the rest of the Arab army. Thousands upon thousands of their men had fallen to the beehives and ballistae, but thousands upon thousands more had used the chance bought by the fallen to charge up to the steel walls.
Soldiers were constantly braving the forest of pikes, using the corpses to leap into the fray. Even if they ended up pincushioned by attacks from all sides, they still charged in, heedless of death. The concept of fear did not seem to exist in the minds of these Arabs.
The more death there was, the more gruesome and gory the battlefield, the more they wanted to fight. Even those mercenary pikemen from Greater and Lesser Balur began to show fear in the face of these savage and roaring Arabs, so one could easily imagine what the other mercenaries felt.
To the west of the Western Regions, in the battlefield legends, Arabs were synonymous with death. Countless powers and empires had felt the terror of the Arabs, their formidable will that did not fear death. And those kingdoms whose armies had collapsed and scattered like beasts in the face of the Arabs had formed the building blocks for the Arabs’ legend of invincibility!
One wave, a second, a third… The Arab soldiers continued to roll in like the ceaseless tide, crashing again and again upon the first defense line.
“Hold!”
“Saber- and axemen, get ready!”
“Archers, get ready!”
On the battlefield, Wang Yan and Wang Fu were serene and unperturbed, like rocks standing firm against a pounding river as they commanded the infantry at the first defense line. No matter how fierce the Arab assault was, how fearless they were, or how many times they attacked, they were unable to penetrate the infantry formations of Wang Yan and Wang Fu.
Along the first defense line, the area defended by Wang Yan and Wang Fu was the most frequently assaulted. However, no matter how many Arabs managed to get past the steel walls, past the shields, beehives, and ballistae, they would all meet their ends in front of Wang Yan’s infantry formations.
At the rear, nearly ten thousand infantry stood calmly in waiting.
In this era where cavalry was king, the Great Tang, where the terrain was not suitable for raising high-quality warhorses, had not won its hegemony through cavalry. In terms of infantry, however, the Great Tang reigned supreme, and it had been by means of these infantry that the Great Tang had once managed to crush Ü-Tsang, the Eastern and Western Turks, Goguryeo, and Mengshe Zhao, and even expanded into the Western Regions.
That had been the era of infantry!
The Grea
t Tang had made everyone experience the power of the Central Plains’ infantry, allowing it to attain its dominant stature. Across the entire world, only the infantry of the Great Tang were capable of holding against the attacks of all kinds of cavalry.
Wang Yan’s infantry did not have as strong of a charge as cavalry, nor were they as flexible, but in a defensive battle, they were a steel wall. Furthermore, the assistance of Wang Chong’s steel walls only bolstered their already formidable defensive capabilities.
“Wind!”
With four black-armored guards standing sentinel around him, Wang Yan solemnly swung down his right hand. Whoosh! The thousands of shieldmen holding the gap suddenly retreated, revealing a large path behind them.
In an instant, thousands of paths like these appeared in the seemingly impervious defense line.
Buzz!
The Arabs’ minds went blank at the appearance of all these gaps. But then they bellowed, flailing their weapons as they charged into the paths. The Arab cavalry behind them also noticed nothing strange, shouting as they followed their comrades.
“Fire!”
Wang Yan waved his right hand once more. Clangclang! The shieldmen worked with the axe- and sabermen to close the paths that had been opened. In an instant, those Arabs who had charged in were trapped.
“Kiiill!”
With an earth-shaking cry, the Tang soldiers began to hack and stab at the trapped Arabs from all directions. No matter how strong, fierce, and courageous the Arab cavalry were, no matter how fearless they were, they were still hopelessly outnumbered by the Tang infantry. So swiftly were they felled that they were not even able to stir a ripple in the Tang formation.
“Wind!”
“Fire!”
……
Wang Yan repeated this tactic again and again, baiting in Arab soldiers and then cutting them off so that they could be slaughtered. Once the shieldmen closed the gap, no Arab horseman could escape Wang Yan’s infantry formation alive.
In Wang Yan’s hands, infantry were not solely restricted to defense, but were also excellent offensive weapons, attacking while defending and defending while attacking. The twenty thousand infantry were like a finely-tuned machine, slaughtering the Arab cavalry with extreme efficiency. Bait, surround, kill… they worked with such callous composure that even the Arab cavalry began to feel intimidated.
The Human Emperor c1-2382 Page 592
